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For more information on the Developing Health course please click here.
8 July: Back home
Back in the office at Johnson House and life is returning to normal after a busy, sunny, exhausting, happy fortnight at Oak Hill. Laura and I are surrounded by about 800 feedback forms from all the different sessions! The participants were very positive about the course – 'I've come away inspired and excited...' 'The standard of teaching was excellent and I felt refreshed in many different ways...' 'Spiritually, it's been so encouraging...''I came away fired up with new ideas...' 'The food has been so good I've gone up three sizes!' were among their comments.
There have been some wonderful people on the course – participants and speakers alike have told stories which have inspired and challenged us and shared wisdom and experience. A total of 61 participants came – some for the full fortnight, others for one week, others as day visitors. In all we had 41 different speakers – it's fantastic that have such a wealth of expertise in CMF – heartfelt thanks to all of them for giving their time and energy.
It is exciting to think about the impact that this course has each year. This year's participants are returning or going for the first time to 18 different countries where they will use their newly acquired knowledge and skills to care for many hundreds of patients, and to teach others who will care for many hundreds more – from Peru to Pakistan and Tibet to Tanzania.
Next year's course is booked for 26 June - 8 July 2011. Maybe we'll see you there?
2 July 2010
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Today I want to be an obstetrician. Last week it was an ophthalmologist and then a psychiatrist after the moving talks we heard about the needs and opportunities in those fields. Yesterday we heard Jacqui Hill speak about the plight of woman in Afghanistan which UNICEF describes as 'one of the worst places in the world in which to be pregnant.' The statistics are shocking – in the remote district where Jacqui worked:
Poverty is one of the causes of these appalling figures but just as important is the low value put on women. They may be left in labour at home for days because the effort and cost of taking them to a health facility is not considered worthwhile. They are hidden behind the burka and treated worse than the animals in some households. How different to Jesus, who spoke with such love and respect to the bleeding woman in Mark chapter 5 – or Paul, who told husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church.
We heard Roquia's story – a woman who had been in labour for four days before her family decided to take her to a clinic. It was a three day journey to get there by stretcher, across mountains and through rivers. At the small, remote clinic they weren't used to doing surgery but Jacqui knew that Roquia would die if they didn't try to take out the dead baby and sew up her ruptured uterus. So they boiled up some instruments in the pressure cooker, dragged a table into the biggest room, gave some IV ketamine and performed a successful operation. Roquia lived. Jacqui says
'I never would have thought I could do it – but God enables you when you need it.'
Lastly, we heard about the 2 million women in the world who suffer from vesico-vaginal fistula as a result of prolonged labour with no obstetric care. These women are totally shunned by society – their baby is dead, their husbands divorce them and they are left as outcasts. But an operation can cure them completely and restore their dignity. What better thing than to be an obstetrician and transform these women's lives?
Let's 'give up our small ambitions' - and go change the world!
30 June 2010
 Alas poor Yorick! he's having a dental injection |
 Practising sutures |
 Giving a spinal anaesthetic |
Day 8 and it's surgery. John Rennie and Colin Binks gave such an encouraging presentation that we all now feel we could do a laparotomy! We learnt some other useful skills too, including suturing (useful or the laparotomy of course) and taking skin grafts, practised on oranges so it's fruit salad for lunch tomorrow. The most gruesome session so far (but great fun!) was learning how to take out a tooth. Tim Cudmore had even brought along some pigs' heads for us to practise on – takes an amazing amount of force to pull out a pig's tooth!
In the evening Ira told us her story – she's an Indian doctor who's been doing medicine in the UK for 15 years – as an SpR and then a consultant. She felt God calling her back to India to serve her own people – she was encouraged by the 'Who is my Neighbour' workshop we ran in London and then set off in January to a Leprosy Mission hospital. She found herself on a 1 in 3 covering the 60 bedded hospital and seeing 200 outpatients every day, and the pressure of work began to take its toll. After about a month she was in her room, composing her letter of resignation when one of the hospital staff visited her and showed her Gideon's story – a man disheartened and overwhelmed by the constant attacks of the Midianites. God's words to him spoke powerfully to Ira;
'Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?' - Judges 6:14
Ira knew that God is sending her and will enable her if she trusts in him. She is planning to return long term.
29 June 2010
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Back for week two of the course, refreshed by a weekend off. A few of our international visitors enjoyed a trip round some of the sights of London – Herve from Benin was amazed to see how the British dress outside Buckingham Palace...
Monday was trauma and orthopaedics day and we had a star-studded cast of lecturers including CMF's very own Giles Cattermole in his other incarnation as a consultant in emergency medicine, the inimitable Ranti and Verona and the wonderful Chris Lavy (always good to make full use of friends and family!) The amazing statistic of the day for me was that 10% of all the deaths in the world are the result of trauma – more than malaria, HIV and TB combined. And of course in the developing world, emergency treatment is often inaccessible, ineffective or unavailable.
 Reducing fractures |
 Giles saving lives |
 Chris & club feet |
Orthopaedic surgeons have the wonderful priviledge of making the lame walk. But today we learned that non-orthopods can do that too. Chris told the story of the Malawi club foot training programme which trained local health workers to treat this common, disabling condition. In 2009, 81% of the country's 1,500 new cases were treated. So with coordinated effort and input around the world, it would not be impossible to treat the 150,000 new cases born each year and give every child a chance to walk. So much to do – and so much could be done – if people are prepared to step out and serve.
25 June 2010
Today is community health day and I'm currently in the back of the lecture theatre watching Alex Duncan's amazing video of life in the back of beyond in Central Asia. He lived there for 6 years with his family, setting up a primary health care programme. It was hard graft but through his work, child mortality fell from 32% to 21%. Amazing.
This morning we had a moving talk from Maureen Wilkinson on community mental health. In terms of global causes of mortality, neuropsychiatric disease is low on the list, but in terms of years of life lived with disability, it is far and away the leader of the field. We heard heart-rending stories of people with psychiatric illness shut away for years, or even tied up with shackles, and so often mental health is seen as a low priority in developing countries. Challenging.
Back to Gisela's question – 'What is medical mission?' After her mission director's crushing assumption that her medical work wasn't real 'mission,' she went away and studied the whole subject. Her conclusion was that restoring health is not a means to an end – to provide the opportunity for church planting – but comes from God's heart to restore a broken world and build his kingdom. Through medical mission and authentic Christian living, God manifests himself in the midst of suffering, and transforms individuals and communities. Inspiring.
Signing off now for the weekend – hoping to catch up on the tennis which has passed me by during this busy week – back on Monday for the next instalment.
24 June 2010
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Two more full days of the course - mosquitoes, worms, and other hazardous parasites yesterday and HIV and palliative care today. There is a bit of time at the end of the day to enjoy that rare event, the English summer evening, and Albert from Malawi has played his first game of croquet - 'Give me another couple of goes at this and I'll be dangerous!'
The amazing Gisela Schneider gave expert teaching on HIV today and this evening talked on 'What is medical mission?' She spoke about her experience as a missionary doctor in West Africa where she worked for 20 years before moving into HIV work in Uganda. When she first arrived in the Gambia, she was the only doctor for 150,000 people. She ran a mission hospital, doing all the caesarians, night calls, clinics and the rest. When she had been there for 4 years, the director of her mission came for a visit. She showed him the hospital and all the patients.... and he said 'So when do you do your mission work?'
Too tired to write more now - it's exhausting running the course - so I'll tell you what her answer was tomorrow.
23 June 2010
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It's been a wonderful couple of days at the Developing Health Course with the combination of excellent medical teaching and spiritual inspiration which makes this course unique. My brain is hurting a little after whistling through the whole of paediatrics in a day yesterday, and the whole of general medicine in an afternoon today! There were fun and games in the paediatric practical skills workshop where Resusci-baby got intubated, cannulated and ventilated – but sadly didn't look any better at the end of the session.
One of the best things about the course is meeting people who've worked in all sorts of places and hearing their stories. Tonight I ran a 'chat show' and interviewed a few of the participants. We heard from one doctor who wondered why everyone suddenly fell to the floor during her ward round in Sudan and then realised that bullets were flying outside the hospital! Another participant has to watch for altitude sickness whenever she returns from work in the city to her home in the mountains of Tibet. We heard about struggles with spiritual oppression and corruption and about the joy of training people and seeing them learn and grow both medically and spiritually.
David Yorston gave us a wonderful lecture on eyes. He reminded us that ophthalmology must be important as Jesus did more healing of blindness than any other specialty! However he also reflected on Jesus' remarkable promise in John 14:12 that we will do even greater things than he has done. During his earthly ministry, Jesus healed a handful of blind people in Palestine. But now, God's ophthalmologists around the world are doing literally millions of sight-restoring cataract operations every year.
What a privilege to be a part of God's healing ministry – not because we are extraordinary people, but we are ordinary people with an extraordinary God. I was moved by a phrase written by a missionary doctor, quaking in his boots as he started an operation – 'It's a tiny needle, but in the mighty hand of God.'
Steven Fouch (CMF Head of Communications) 020 7234 9668
Alistair Thompson on 07970 162 225
Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) was founded in 1949 and is an interdenominational organisation with over 5,000 doctors, 900medical and nursing students and 300 nurses and midwives as members in all branches of medicine, nursing and midwifery. A registered charity, it is linked to over 100 similar bodies in other countries throughout the world.
CMF exists to unite Christian healthcare professionals to pursue the highest ethical standards in Christian and professional life and to increase faith in Christ and acceptance of his ethical teaching.
